TALLY STICKS FOR MONEY

 
Medieval English split tally stick (front and reverse view)

For millennia, simple forms of record-keeping have been used as ways to keep track of debt, to substitute for the contemporaneous conveyance of specie, or to accommodate the future settlement and netting of debts. In England, tally sticks were regularly used:

A tally is usually a stick, or a bone, or a piece of ivory — some kind of artefact — that is used to record information. Palaeolithic tallies include the Lembombo bone, found in the Lembombo Mountains in southern Africa, reported to date from around 44,000 BC; the Ishango bone, which consists of the fibula of a baboon, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the former Belgian Congo), thought to be 20,000 years old; and the so-called Wolf bone, discovered in Czechoslovakia during excavations at Vestonice, Moravia, in the 1930s, and estimated to be around 30,000 years old. Marked with notches and symbols, these tallies are ancient recording devices, means of data storage and communication. Not merely artefacts, they are important historical documents.

In England, from around the twelfth century, and for over 600 years, tallies became important financial instruments, a key part of public finance and an answer to a perennial problem for money-lenders, merchants and those involved in commerce and trade: how to both facilitate and record the exchange of goods, services and commodities. Reading these English tallies, understanding their history and their changing use, provides us with an understanding not only of the nature of individual financial transactions during the late medieval and early modern period, but also of the development of banking practices in England and its relationship to the English state.

Usually made of willow or hazelwood, tallies were used to record the key information of a financial exchange. The name of the parties involved, the specific trade and the date were written on each side of a stick. Notches of different sizes — which stood for pounds, shillings, and pence — were also cut on both sides. Then the stick was split in two along its length, creating a unique jagged edge; only those two pieces could ever fit perfectly together again. When someone presented one side as proof of a transaction, the parties could check for the right fit.

Tallies also enabled the functioning of the tax system in medieval England, which was a rather more complex affair. The process took months to complete. It worked roughly like this. Tax receivers collected revenues from the King's subjects at Easter. They then passed them on to the Exchequer, which completed an audit in late September or early October. At the time, the Exchequer had two branches: the Lower and the Higher. The Lower Exchequer received and disbursed the revenues. The Higher Exchequer audited the process. They used tallies to track who had paid whom. As soon as the Lower Exchequer received the revenues, the tally cutter recorded the payment on the tally and split the stick. The tax receiver — the debtor — got the longer part, called the 'stock'. The Exchequer — the creditor — kept the short end of the stick, called the 'foil'. And once a year, at Michaelmas, the Higher Exchequer audited the whole process by matching stocks and foils. The stock was the proof that the collector had not merely pocketed the tax revenues.

Over time, both the use and appearance of the tallies began to change: in the early years, tallies were 3 to 5 inches long; later, they grew to be 1 to 2 feet long, and sometimes much longer. More money meant more notches; more notches, in turn, required longer sticks. One of the last issues of tallies made by the English Exchequer was in 1729, for £50,000: the tally is a whopping 8 feet, 5 inches long, visible proof of the growth of public spending, taxation and inflation.

To be clear: unlike coins, tallies did not actually settle debt. By accepting a foil, a vendor was effectively agreeing to a delayed payment from the Exchequer; the tally was a kind of guarantee that they would get coins. For the state, meanwhile, the tally was a convenient way to borrow from its suppliers, or a form of what we would now call vendor financing — the citizens and merchants who sold goods and services for tallies were effectively financing the state, in much the same way as those who lent actual coins to the Exchequer.

Pablo adds:

To read the complete article, see:
tally sticks for money--8/13/24 (https://www.delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=5108)

To read earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
FEATURED WEB SITE (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v03n29a13.html)
MEDIEVAL TALLY STICKS AND HOW THEY WORKED (https://www.coinbooks.org/v20/esylum_v20n29a26.html)
THE ORIGINS OF MONEY (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n30a30.html)

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